Each preseason, Steve Spurrier replays every game from the previous year for his team.

“The more I watch last year’s games, I come off saying, ‘How the (heck) did we beat those guys?’ ” Spurrier told the Columbia Touchdown Club on Wednesday in his annual address to the group. “We are not a dominant, super duper team, but somehow or another we finished fourth in the country and somehow or another we won 11 games.”

In fact, the Gamecocks have won 11 games three straight seasons. Spurrier pointed out Wednesday that many of those came by the slimmest of margins.

“I keep reminding our players about those close wins that sometimes the sun doesn’t shine on the same dog all the time,” Spurrier said. “If we can get two or three touchdowns ahead, we need to do that. We need to play better. Whether we can, I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re quite as good as advertised.”

South Carolina’s 33 wins in the last three years and 42 wins in the last four years are both school records. The Gamecocks must be careful not to take their collective foot off the gas, Spurrier said.

“We have had a good run, but we’ve got to keep pushing,” he said. “Our school does not have that super duper tradition like a Southern Cal. They say schools like Southern Cal can have some down years, but they can always come back. We have to make sure we don’t go back down. We have to really keep pushing, pushing, pushing to stay up there.”

Spurrier predicted the defense would be better than many people believe but fretted about his offense.

“We have to run the ball,” he said. “We had a lot of times (last year) there was just nowhere to go. Hopefully, we will block a little better and get the running game going because that’s going to be very important to our success.”